


a garden (you never get to see)

by ketchupcrisp



Series: you great unfinished symphony (you sent for me) [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Multi, Peter Parker-centric, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketchupcrisp/pseuds/ketchupcrisp
Summary: Two Peter Parkers. Two universes. Two unique paths to healing. The long-awaited (mostly by me!) Peter-centric spin-off to "you great unfinished symphony (you sent for me)," because if there's one thing you can count on me for, it's ripping off Hamilton lyrics for titles!
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton/Phil Coulson/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark/Thor, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: you great unfinished symphony (you sent for me) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1285988
Comments: 28
Kudos: 47





	1. Dental Hygiene and Other Coping Mechanisms

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome friends, old and new, to the next installment of the symphony verse! Bear with me through a long set of author's notes. They won't all be like this, I just like to make sure everyone knows what they're getting into. 
> 
> 1) This story is a Peter-centric spinoff, and a semi-sequel, to part one of the this verse, "you great unfinished symphony (you sent for me)." You are welcome to read this story without having engaged with part one, but fair warning that I imagine it would be quite confusing to do so. If you want to hit me up for a brief synopsis, feel free to do so. 
> 
> 2) While part one took place entirely within a D/s AU, this story will alternate between time with D/s Peter, and MCU (ish--I made some important changes to the MCU in part one) Peter. Each chapter will have a heading at the top reminding you of what verse we're in. This should also make it easier for those of you who choose to follow only one of the Peters through their journey. 
> 
> 3) While D/s Peter, having been born into this universe, does not struggle quite as much with the norms and realities of his universe as Tony did in part one, you should still assume that the themes explored in that story, including the complexity of consent, kink negotiation, biological vs. social traits, and other related concepts, will be present. If any of these are major trigger areas for you, this story might not be a good fit. Likewise, if reading about a teenager grappling with these issues (exclusively in the context of romantic and/or sexual relationships with folks in his age group) will upset or trigger you, I'd advise considering other stories. I can help you read around explicit sex scenes, but not the larger ways in which Peter's experiences are shaped by the D/s context. 
> 
> 4) If you need or want more information about anything in the story before deciding to read, please feel free to leave me a note in the comments and/or on Tumblr at any time and I’ll be happy to help as best I can. I try to be conscientious about tagging for major themes/topics which may be upsetting/triggering. I also tend to flag more chapter-specific things in notes on those specific chapters. Ultimately, however, you are an active agent who knows yourself best. So please take care, whatever form that care may take for you!
> 
> 5) Right now, the majority of the relationship tags are specific to the non-MCU verse, reflecting major/primary relationships within the larger poly-group. I will add MCU relationship tags as they come relevant; I am also trying to sort out how to tag two different sets of relationships within one story, so please be patient with me on that front. 
> 
> 6) I do have a beta for this story which is tremendously exciting, and I am so grateful for lou2's help! I do generally ask that readers keep larger con-crit to themselves. Especially at the current moment I'm struggling with some pretty intense anxiety, and I’m just not up for turning this fun hobby into another trigger for myself. Put simply, if you don’t like the story (and especially if you’re here just to kink shame, say that you hate D/s stories, don't think Tony should be allowed to be a sub, etc.) please don’t read it. I gleefully delete those kinds of comments anyway. 
> 
> 7) My hope is to update weekly on Fridays. However, I or my beta (DID I MENTION I HAVE A BETA NOW?) may occasionally need more time. The best place to look for news about any delays or other news about the story is my Tumblr. 
> 
> 8) For those of you who had fun with the #AskStrange interactive function on the last part of the story, you can absolutely feel free to submit prompts for this verse as well. I am still catching up on some of the prompts from the last story, but I will definitely get to them all eventually!
> 
> 9) Chapter-specific warnings for this one include discussions of strained friendships, as well as conversations about grief/loss (specifically May's of Ben.) 
> 
> Alright, I think that’s finally it for me. Thanks to those of you who stuck around so far. And away we go!

**D/s Peter**

The bell rang at 3:15, though Peter was on edge in anticipation of the noise for several minutes before that. It was partly the sound; enhanced hearing was handy for things like fighting crime and sneaking out of the apartment without getting caught, but it also had a tendency to make the most mundane aspects of life almost unbearable sometimes. For some reason, Midtown’s scientifically advanced curriculum and technologies had never been extended to the noise they had chosen to signal the end of classes. The bell was shrill, endless, and Peter could have sworn that someone had gone in with sound mixing tech to add in strains of something especially unbearable, like squealing bicycle brakes or something. The sound made most of the un-enhanced students in the school, even the seniors, flinch. After the spider bite, with all of his senses turned up to eleven, it made Peter want to claw his own eardrums out. More than once he’d skipped classes not because of any Spider-Man related duties, but just to avoid having to hear the damn bell one more time.

Those days were supposedly behind him now. He’d told May about Spider-Man, and not only had he miraculously survived that conversation, but Peter had also somehow managed to find himself officially committed to some kind of mentor/mentee thing with Tony Stark. (Who, it turned out, was not the Tony Stark of this world, but Peter tried pretty hard not to think about that very often because the whole thing was weird enough without any kind of multiverse shenanigans to consider. Plus whenever he let his mind linger too long on the other universe it sort of made him hate the other Peter, which was pretty outrageous given that Peter wasn’t even totally sure he wanted Stark around.)

The prospect of his first dinner with Stark and the rest of the Avengers, to be held that evening after May’s shift ended, was daunting enough. To make matters worse, the whole thing wreaked of some kind of after-school-special domesticity. While Peter wasn’t so jaded as to be able to pretend that hanging with some of the most famous superheroes in the world wasn’t appealing on some level, building anything beyond a professional relationship with the lot of them was ultimately a child’s dream. Besides, if Peter had learned one thing in the past few years, it was that his childhood had effectively ended at the same moment he’d accepted the full reality of his transformation. (Great power, great responsibility…sometimes he really hated how well-spoken Uncle Ben had been. Couldn’t the guy have left a bit of wiggle room in there? Like with great power comes great responsibility…except during SAT season?)

The point was, what Tony Stark was doing was decent and all. Peter certainly appreciated his help with the mounting pile of medical bills that had been threatening to swallow May and him whole. He’d also used the rather flimsy excuse of the internship to get them both on SI’s benefits plan, which meant that any future Spider-Man mishaps would be covered. The idea of being able to just walk into an emergency room and get treated when he needed it, rather than waiting with growing desperation to see if his injuries would become manageable without any external interventions, felt like an almost unfathomable luxury. Unfortunately Peter couldn’t rid himself of the suspicion that this was all happening too late. Too late for him to catch up in school. Too late to repair the relationships he’d strained and in some cases broken. And definitely too late to be building something new, some kind of makeshift family, with the Avengers. Sometimes it was enough to make him resent Stark. Why couldn’t he have just stayed forever fixed in Peter’s memory as the larger-than-life hero who had saved his life at the Stark Expo and then flown away, all while letting kid!Peter believe he had been the one to do the saving? Why did Stark have to make Peter hope, when its absence had been the one constant these past few years?

Peter was halfway to the school’s main entrance, grateful, at least, that the day was finally over, when he remembered with a groan that he had one more stop to make. He pivoted on his heel, narrowly avoiding a collision with two senior girls. One glared poisonously at him; the other, someone he recognized distantly as a friend of Liz Toomes’, managed something closer to a sympathetic kind of grimace. (That one was worse, Peter thought. The last thing he needed was for people to start feeling sorry for him.)

He arrived at Principal Morita’s office quicker than he would have liked, though it was probably for the best that Peter was punctual, given that the entire reason for their frequent meetings was to ensure Peter ‘stayed on track’ after the train wreck of the past year or so. At least Morita wasn’t so bad. He never spoke down to Peter, and his office lacked any of the cheesy inspirational posters that covered the guidance counselor’s walls.

“Ah, Peter, good. Have a seat. How have things been going this week?” Peter shrugged.

“Fine, sir.” There were a few beats of silence as Morita waited for him to continue, but Peter was feeling just stubborn enough to wait it out today. His eyes wandered to a framed medall on a shelf behind the principal’s desk; the insignia looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.

“Given any more thought to any of the extracurricular options we discussed during our last meeting?” Peter winced. Pretty much everyone in his life—the school, May, even Tony had brought up getting involved at school, but he’d been pretty solidly put into ‘loser’ slot immediately upon entering the doors of Midtown High. He’d then moved over into the more specialized ‘loser who also falls asleep in class a lot’ after the bite and taking up the Spider-Man mantle. And while Midtown might be more evolved in a lot of ways, it was still a high school; there was very little point in trying to move out of one of those boxes once you’d been put there. Peter didn’t see a whole lot of point in trying. “Well, Mr. Harrington has suggested, and I quite agree, that you might do well on the academic decathlon team.” This time Peter couldn’t quite hold back a snort, though he tried his best to turn it into a cough at the last minute.

“Decathalon? Seriously? You have to have good grades and everything for that, don’t you?”

“I think we both know that the grades you’ve been getting over the past several months are not reflective of your abilities, Peter.” There was nothing, really, to say in the face of this matter-of-fact assessment. Either he could insist he was in fact as disengaged and foolish as the past few months suggested. (This option would undoubtedly lead to him getting kicked out of school.) Or he would have to admit he simply didn’t want to join the decathlon team, or any group activity for that matter. Morita nodded as if Peter’s silence had involved a vocal and enthusiastic agreement. “Yes, I think this is going to be a good opportunity to reset and establish good habits with like minded peers. They’re meeting tomorrow in the library. 4 PM. Don’t be late.”

Halfway to the door, Peter remembered that Liz was the captain of the academic decathlon team. He turned around, ready to beg, even to offer to join one of the sports teams even though masking his powers during football or something would be a nightmare, but Principal Morita was already on the phone and having what sounded like an increasingly intense conversation about that year’s budget.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad? Liz was always kind to Peter, even after his already poor reputation had started to plummet. Sure, his chances of getting the date he’d once dreamed of were nonexistent. Not only would she never look twice at him that way, but Peter could never be with her when he couldn’t tell her that he knew that her Dad’s sudden absence from school events was not due to business travel, but because he was awaiting trial for stealing and distributing alien weaponry. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends, right?

A yell from down the hallway was followed by a loud crash, and a piece of colourful plastic skidded to a stop at Peter’s feet. He picked it up to find a bright purple Lego brick. Its owner stood several feet away, hovering over the remains of what Peter was fairly sure had been the Knight Bus. After a few moments of painful hesitation, he picked the Lego up and crossed the space between him and Ned to hold it out to the boy who had once been his closest friend. Ned barely glanced at him as he snatched the piece from his hand.

“Thanks.”

“Flash is a jerk.” Ned grunted his agreement, still busy sweeping the remains of the project haphazardly into his bag. It would take hours to rebuild, Peter thought, especially since it looked like Ned had made several embellishments to the design that the kit came with. “I could help—”

“It’s fine. Don’t do me any favours.”

“I’m _not_.” Peter meant to say more, wanted to tell Ned that it was Peter himself who would benefit most from the chance to huddle over Lego with his friend again, even just for the length of time it would take to clean up the mess. But he closed his mouth before any of those words spilled out. Ned had suffered over the past year, just as alone as Peter had been, and it wasn’t fair to expect to be able to just stroll back into his life now.  
****

“I really don’t know why he’s not here yet. He really has been doing a lot better lately; going to school on time, getting his work done. And I know he’s excited about the internship. He doesn’t say it, Peter’s not really the type—I mean, he was, but then all of this—”

May was babbling, and Tony absolutely hated it. May Parker was one of a very select group of people who had never been afraid or in awe of Tony Stark, the mask or the reality . Across two universes she had yelled at him the first time they’d met, and he had always treasured the unique blend of fear and affection her presence provoked in him. Now she was rushing to reassure and apologize, which meant she knew two things: that Peter wasn’t coming, and that it hurt Tony a lot more than he was willing to admit. Avoiding her gaze, his eyes wandered over to the dining room table. The Avengers rarely used it, preferring to eat in front of the television or in the kitchen, but today it had been carefully set with gleaming china and silver cutlery. Tony had dug the stuff out of storage; it wasn’t the fanciest or most expensive set in the Tower, not by far. Tony’s own parents never would have gone for the colourful splashes of painted wildflowers, or the thin gold leaf encircling the borders. But for Edwin and Anna Jarvis, who had saved for months for this particular set after their wedding, it had been perfect. (And yet Jarvis still hadn’t yelled at Tony in his old universe when he’d chipped one of the small dessert plates. He would bet that the crack in one of the tea cups here spoke to a similar lesson about mistakes and forgiveness that Howard Stark, with all his power and privilege, had never managed to convey as gracefully or lovingly as his butler.)

A hand came up against the small of Tony’s back—not guiding or pressing, just a quiet offer of support. He was not all that surprised to find it belonged to Phil Coulson, who was smiling warmly at May.

“Let’s sit. We can use this time to get to know you a little bit better, and then you can take home as much food as you’d like for Peter. I think you mentioned he particularly likes roast beef, yes?”

It was, in truth, a bit of a face-saving question, given that the entire meal had been designed with Peter’s tastes and caloric needs in mind. In addition to the roast beef (which Rhodey had insisted on taking charge of, to the complaints of exactly none of his spouses), the table was practically groaning under the weight of all the side dishes: a massive casserole dish contained a mound of scalloped potatoes, which sat next to Yorkshire puddings and gravy, as well as several bowls of roasted vegetables including brussel sprouts covered in some kind of honey dijon sauce, mushrooms in balsamic vinegar and white wine, and beets with goat cheese and walnuts. May’s expression was distinctly guilty as she eyed the offerings.

“Maybe I should just head back home. If Peter’s there I’m betting he’s pretty upset—”

“I promise we won’t keep you for long; you can even take dessert to go if you’d like,” Steve offered. (Oh God, Tony had forgotten the dessert, a Reese’s Pieces cake Tony had ordered from the best bakery in the city all because the kid loved peanut butter.) “But you said you came straight from work, and from the sounds of it, the job has only gotten more demanding since my Ma was a nurse. Getting a little bit of food in your system before heading back to Queens probably isn’t the worst idea.”

While Natasha glided soundlessly to the table and removed a place setting, Steve pulled out a chair for May. Clint, who had come to absolutely adore May in recent weeks, served her a heaping plate full of anything she so much as glanced at. The conversation limped forward a bit awkwardly at first; both Tony and May were so occupied with trying to pretend not to be overly affected by Peter’s absence that they were neither of them at their social best. But eventually Steve started a conversation about medicine. May loved her work enough that she couldn’t help but be drawn in, and soon they were trading podcast recommendations and bemoaning the rise of psuedo-scientific ‘treatments’ like old friends.

“How is the hospital responding to the new orientational labour laws?” Rhodey asked as he spooned himself another helping of beets. “It’s definitely been a challenge for some branches of the military.”

There was a moment where May’s eyes did a quick darting thing that reminded Tony way too much of Peter when he was trying to lie. She got it under control more quickly than Peter tended to, but when she followed up by taking a rushed bite of potatoes (a stalling maneuver Tony had used more than once himself) he was sure.

“It’s been fine. Some bumps, like there always is when administration gets involved in anything, but everyone’s settling now.”

Across the table from Tony, Natasha’s expression had gone carefully blank, as had Coulson’s. Steve, whose tendency toward sincerity had never been fully even by the many years he’d spent as the leader of SHIELD, was frowning. Tony cut in quickly before any of them could press further. (He’d be damned if he was losing two Parkers in one night.)

“So, about that condo I sent you a link to?” There was a distinct edge of relief to May’s expression, even as she made a show of glaring.

“You are _not_ buying us a condo, Tony Stark.”

“But it doesn’t even have a doorman!”  
****  
It had been a few weeks since May had dreaded returning to her apartment. For a while there, when Peter had constantly been sneaking out, returning with unexplained injuries and a sense of bitter hopelessness, she had sometimes lingered in her car for a minute or two, willing herself to push through the pit of dread in her gut, go inside, and face whatever she was about to find. Since Tony Stark’s unexpected arrival in their lives, however, she’d somehow started to trust that while the teenager she was arriving to might not always be sunshine and roses, he would at least be reasonably whole and healthy and _there_.

The return of that knotted feeling in her stomach made her angry and tired. She let the door open a little harder than usual and scanned the apartment warily. Peter, it turned out, was not hard to find. He was sitting on the couch in the dark, grasping something small in his right hand. When he heard May enter, he turned to face her with red-rimmed eyes. His hand fell open, revealing a Lego mini figure in a purple vest and matching pants. Weighted down by a familiarity with death and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, Peter usually looked far older than his age. But right now he seemed impossibly, heartbreakingly young, and all of May’s frustration and exhaustion vanished in the face of it. She kicked off her shoes, put down the leftovers, and stood before her nephew, who immediately buried his face against her hip.

“Oh honey.”

“I wanted to. I really—”

“I know.”

“I just, I couldn’t. And now they’re all going to hate me and this’ll just be another thing I screwed up.” May snorted, gesturing to the kitchen counter onto which the leftovers she’d brought with her had barely fit.

“In addition to most of a roast and every imaginable side, I’m pretty sure there’s an entire specialty-baked cake in that bag. You’re not losing them over one no-show, Pete. I’m not sure you could lose them at all even if you tried.” Peter made a distressed noise of dissent that might have been a word and probably wasn’t. May gave in to the urge to card her fingers through his hair. “I don’t know how much you remember about how things were after Ben died. But pretty much the only way I could get through the days was to set one small, manageable goal. I’d tell myself I didn’t have to face a whole day, I just had to brush my teeth. That’s all. At the beginning, I usually went back to bed after that. But as time went on, I added another step, and another: I’d brush my teeth _and_ pour a bowl of cereal. And then I’d brush my teeth, pour some cereal, and make some coffee. Eventually, I was making it through whole mornings, and then whole days. But I had to start by brushing my teeth.”

“Is that a hint?” Peter joked weakly, putting a hand in front of his mouth and pretending to smell his breath.

“My point, whippersnapper, is that we need to find whatever your equivalent of brushing your teeth is, and maybe a big meal like that was more of a third or a fifth step. I’m going to keep going to the dinners in the meantime. They’re…it was good, I think, to get some adult interaction outside of the hospital, and they seem like a genuinely decent bunch. But maybe for you it’ll be better to spend some time with Tony one-on-one first, especially since the internship will mean you’ll have something besides your personal lives to talk about. Eventually, when you’re ready, whether that’s two or five or fifteen weeks from now, you’ll join us for dinner too.” After a couple of sniffling sounds that May studiously pretended not to hear, Peter straightened up and glanced toward the kitchen.

“You said something about cake?”

May had heard what the team had said about the need to get carbs and fats into Peter’s overactive metabolism, she really had. But at the lowest points, the kid had barely eaten anything, so it still felt like a victory to bring the cake, still on its tray, out to the living room and watch the childish glee on Peter’s face as she cut into it and watched a cascade of Reese’s Pieces fall from the center.


	2. Homecoming (Reprise)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MCU Peter's first day at his new digs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Other than a general warning for angst, I don't think there are any specific warnings needed for this chapter. As always, feel free to let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

**MCU Peter**

“I guess it’ll be good training for college dorms, right? I mean, if you can negotiate a chore chart with literal superheroes, a 19 year old who hogs the common area and eats all the good chips is going to be a snap.”

May’s voice echoed around the cavernous and mostly empty confines of Peter’s new room in Avengers HQ. The newly rebuilt compound was mostly a carbon copy of the one that had been destroyed during the Battle for Earth, a fact which Peter would have known even had General Rhodes not told him when the team had been trying to sell Peter on the move. Every inch of the place that he’d seen so far practically screamed Tony Stark in its befuddling mix of opulence and thoughtful practicality. The former was frequently used to mask the latter, like the way that the futuristic glass and chrome nightstand made it easy to miss the light therapy lamp that sat atop it, or how the astronomically high thread count of the sheets drew attention away from the weighted comforter on top of them. Peter wondered sometimes if Tony had ever learned to care for someone openly, without using the showy flash of wealth or status as a cover. (When he really wanted to hurt himself, Peter wondered if Tony had found that kind of openness in the other universe. Was that why he’d stayed?)

He could almost feel May’s relief as she surveyed the space. Really, he couldn’t blame her. The weeks since Peter’s identity had been revealed to the world had been a nightmare for everyone. It had taken reporters mere hours to find their apartment and begin camping out, and while the expensive joint legal team that Stark Industries and the Avengers had sicked on the press had quickly reduced the number of “Spider-Man’s a Murderer!” accounts. Unfortunately, there was no returning things to the perilous equilibrium Peter had almost managed to find in those few weeks between returning from Europe and his outing at the posthumous hand of Mysterio. The most he could now hope for was to minimize the collateral damage. Without Peter to worry about, May would be able to give up their apartment and move in with Happy. His building was better secured, and once the press realized Peter wasn’t with them, they would undoubtedly find the reward of trying to track her an entirely worthless effort.

“Are you kidding? I’ve dreamed of being here since…well, you know how long. I might never leave!” In his attempts to upsell the move, Peter very nearly gave away too much. His aunt’s gaze went from wistful and nostalgic to sharp and dangerous in a matter of seconds. How could Peter have been so stupid? May’s worst fear was precisely that, that Peter would find himself feeling trapped by fate and circumstance and accept superheroing as a life path rather than an occasional side-gig. That living in the Avengers HQ might push him further down such a path had been virtually her only argument against the relocation.

“Peter—”

“Kidding!” he almost shouted, then shoved a heavy box of books at her. “Help me re-alphabetize these as we shelve? No matter what he says, Happy was not respecting my system.”

“I heard that!” came a crabby shout from the hallway.

Peter breathed a quiet sigh of relief. That had been entirely too close.  
****

A little over two hours later found Peter wandering the compound on his own. May had been reluctant to leave, but was eventually persuaded by Happy’s thoughtfully-timed reservations in the city (Peter had mouthed a silent thanks to the guy for that one.) The repeated assurances of Peter, Happy, and FRIDAY that Captain Rogers would be returning later that evening was the eventual tipping point.

“At least tell me you’re going to order pizza on the Avenger’s credit card and do the dance from _Risky Business_ on these ridiculously expensive floors?” she’d pleaded.

“Sure. That’s the one with Hugh Grant as Prime Minister, right?” May had hit him on the arm and made a sound that resembled both a laugh and a sob. It was a contradictory and ridiculous noise, and for the span of a few thudding heartbeats Peter wanted to beg her not to go. She had been the closest thing he’d ever had to a true constant, and the thought of losing her now felt like falling through the sky the day of Thanos’ first invasion, but without the knowledge that Tony—or anyone—would catch him. (If this is what real adulting was supposed to feel like, then he was pretty sure his generation was actually under-stating how shitty it really was.)

He did briefly consider ordering food after she and Happy finally left. But maybe Steve would want to eat when he got here. Peter didn’t really know what he liked, or even what places would deliver up here.The longer he thought about what should have been a relatively simple decision, the more complex and unachievable it seemed.

So instead of doing anything useful, Peter snooped. Because he might be older and more jaded than when he’d first imagined living amongst superheroes, but that didn’t mean he was entirely unaffected by suddenly bunking with the likes of people he’d dressed up as when he was a kid. That wasn’t to say all the rooms were interesting. It was clear that some of them, like the Winter Soldier’s, hadn’t been used at all since the compound had been rebuilt. Others, like Colonel Rhodes and Falcon’s, were so compulsively neat that even though Peter knew both men had been around, he would have had to be way more willing to really violate their privacy to learn anything of value. Dr. Banner’s room, recognizable from several feet away by the widened doorway he’d clearly installed to accommodate his shared Hulk/Bruce frame, was littered with a few interesting looking scientific journals, and it smelled faintly like a spicy kind of tea. Next to him was The Scarlet Witch. Peter almost didn’t venture inside. No one had seen Wanda since the service for Tony. He’d heard snippets of enough conversations to know that several members of the team were looking, and others (particularly Clint) seemed to feel that if Wanda wished to grieve her loss privately, that was her right.

What caught his eye, then, was not the ample evidence that the room had been untouched, but rather the few signs that seemed to suggest something to the contrary. The bed was made, but not with the crisp, clean lines that Peter had come to associate with professional cleaners. There was nothing personal on any of the shelves or tables, but the bottom drawer of the nightstand was slightly ajar. There was a faint mark on the top of the oak dresser that looked kind of like the ones that had once dotted the furniture in his and May’s apartment from when his aunt fell asleep with a candle burning. But that could easily be just a defect of the wood, couldn’t it? And the drawer, well maybe the wind had just kicked up or something. If Peter had learned one damn thing from the past few months, and especially from being right about Tony’s status, it was that asking questions when he wasn’t sure if he wanted the answer was a mistake. He closed Wanda’s door with an audible click and continued on his way.

He didn’t bother with Steve’s room. As far as Peter was concerned, the two of them spent more than enough time together as it was, especially given that they barely liked each other a lot of the time. Across the hall was a blank door. Peter couldn’t know for sure having only been in the main foyer of the building before it had been levelled, but he was pretty sure it had belonged to Tony in the old version of the compound. Immediately he was reminded of the way May had kept Uncle Ben’s chair at the table until after the Snap. In so many other ways Peter recognized now that May had modelled healthy grieving habits in the aftermath of Ben’s loss. She’d held on to some of his uncle’s stuff, but not too much; she talked about him sometimes, and encouraged Peter to do the same, but didn’t seem to let herself linger on anything outside the good memories. She kept a few pictures around, but didn’t allow the house to become some kind of monument .The chair, though…the chair had been the one outlier, a quiet but stubborn refusal to release her husband without a fight.

The door to the unmarked room was closed. Peter left it that way.  
****

He should have ended his exploration there. Instead, Peter took the elevator into the sub-basement. He told himself he was seeking nothing more than a potential glimpse of Professor Hulk’s lab space, but the pounding thud of his heart that accompanied his every step out of the elevator proved otherwise.

Truly, he didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but the blank emptiness of what he knew had been Tony’s workshop in the previous iteration of the compound left Peter breathless. He nearly turned right back around and sprinted for the elevator before the doors had closed, but a faint whirring noise echoed through the otherwise empty expanse of the room.

Peter made his way toward the sound and found, shoved together in a corner as if the empty room had been somehow pressed for space, Tony’s three most prized bots. DUM-E, the one who had made the noise at Peter’s entrance, whirred again and extended his claw. Without thinking, Peter extended his hand. In a house that felt so over-populated by ghosts, encountering the solid metal of the bot felt strangely shocking.

“So this is where you ended up, huh? Doesn’t seem like Tony to not have made better arrangements for you.” DUM-E made another noise, this one a beep that sounded almost like a whine. Quickly, he withdrew his hand, unwilling to face the potential that Tony had not just the world grieving for his absence, but his own bots as well. “Hey, I get it. I expected…well, definitely nothing about how things have played out. But look, there’s no reason for you guys to be shoved in a corner like this. FRIDAY, lights to 50%. These their charging stations over here? Talk me through setting them up, would you?”  
****

Peter was still downstairs when Steve finally made his entrance. The guy looked exhausted the way he always did these days, and Peter could see the outline of the EDITH glasses in the pocket of his plaid button-up. From what Peter could tell Steve never went anywhere without them, and he seemed to spend the majority of his days tracking down any and all potential problems flagged by the system.

He smiled widely and sincerely, though, when his eyes fell upon Peter, who was in the middle of an argument with Butterfingers about whether or not the bot needed oiling. Peter was acutely conscious of what it probably looked like--like he was stepping right into Tony’s shoes, inhabiting his favourite space and caring for his bots, practically just an extension of the man himself. The thought made everything inside Peter seize with cold fury, and he threw the oil can he’d found in Bruce’s lab next door to the floor with a loud clatter.

“You were supposed to be here two hours ago. I’m starving.” Steve’s smile melted away instantly, replaced with the blend of impatience and guilt that so often seemed to colour his interactions with Peter.

“Sorry. I figured your Aunt would still be here, and one of the leads I was tracking turned out to—”

“Yeah whatever. Let’s just get some pizza or something. There has to be somewhere that will deliver out here, right?”

“Uh, yeah, there’s definitely—yeah. We can do pizza. You can stay down here until it gets here if you want, I can always have FRIDAY let you know when it gets here.” Peter shook his head, already rising to his feet and turning his back on the bots without another glance. The only thing more painful than the whole ‘next Iron Man’ thing was the idea that Steve was looking at him and seeing the next Tony Stark. He wasn’t going to add any fuel to that fire.  
****

“So your Aunt and Mr. Hogan, they’re getting on alright then?”

Peter had learned in the past several months that Steve, while commanding and forceful on the battlefield, was also a socially awkward and lonely guy who seemed to crave company without having the first clue as to how to really be around people. This tended to mean that the two of them spent a fair amount of time in awkward silence, a trend with which Peter generally felt fine. Given that this was Steve’s fourth attempt at starting a conversation, though, he seemed to have other plans now that they were roomies.

“I mean they just moved in together, so yeah I assume they’re pretty happy.”

“And you like Mr. Hogan? I never ended up having much in the way of direct contact with him, but Tony always spoke very highly of—”

“Yeah he’s fine.” Steve sighed audibly, and despite the fact that Peter often considered pissing the guy off to be a kind of sport, he knew a few seconds of guilt. Steve was trying in his own unpolished and uncomfortable way, it wasn’t his fault that he wasn’t, well, Tony. “He makes her laugh a lot, which she hasn’t done much in the past few years. And he seems, I don’t know. Solid. Grounded.”

“That’s really good. I know we covered this when we first discussed moving you in here, but he and your aunt are welcome here anytime. I agree it’s a good idea having you relocate until the worst of this mess blows over, but none of us want you to isolate yourself from the people in your life.”

At this, Peter couldn’t help but snort. If there was one thing he’d assumed someone like Steve would understand it was that there was no way to not end up isolated when you were like them. He’d tried to balance super-heroing and a normal life, and had managed only a few blissful weeks before Quentin Beck had turned Peter’s entire life upside down.

“Peter…”

“Look, I’m pretty tired from the move. Thanks for the pizza, but I think I’m going to take the rest of it and eat in bed, then pass out watching TikTok or something. Goodnight, Steve.”

Having retreated safely to his quarters, Peter went through the motions of finishing his meal, then washed up in the ensuite bathroom. It was full of the kinds of skin and hair products that Aunt May would probably lose her mind over, but he stuck to the basics of his routine-- a quick wash of his face with drugstore soap followed by brushing and flossing his teeth. When he re-entered his room, he cast an unwilling glance toward the Spider-Man suit that he hadn’t worn once since downloading the AI Tony had sent over from the other universe into it. Peter stared at it every night and felt the pull of temptation to put it on. He already knew what a relief it would be to hear Tony’s voice again, to be able to seek out his support and hear his terrible jokes and mine his almost encyclopedic knowledge.

“FRIDAY, turn out the lights and set an alarm for 6:30 AM please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh I'm so glad that even after such a long break, folks are still interested in the next part of this journey! I'm so grateful for your kudos, questions, and comments. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Holy crap I missed you all. The break I took from writing was far longer than I intended, largely because the second part of this pandemic has been kicking my ass a bit. But I am so glad to be back and to be writing and sharing from this verse with you all! I can't wait to hear what you think of Chapter One.


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